I'm not going to lie. I didn't finish book. The only reason why I picked it was because I needed to order my audible books before I cancelled my accounts and I had so many self-help books, I thought something that was more psychological would be a great way to mix things up. So this was it. Guys, I didn't love it.

Which is crazy because it has so many high reviews!

Goodreads - 4.1/5 out of 179,588 votes

Amazon - 4.7 stars out of 2,924 reviews

Audible - 4.3 out of 8,674 ratings)

Google says that 92% of users like it (whatever that means)

And the NYT's says "It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound, full of intellectual surprises..."

Here are 2 takeaway's anyway!

Takeaway #1 - Humans aren't rational

When we enter into a situation we bring biases, stereotypes and preconceived notions. This is the case for statisticians as well! For a long time psychologists understood humans to be rational, when really they aren't and can be heavily influenced. For example, In one experiment, experienced German judges were inclined to give a shoplifter a longer sentence if they had just rolled a pair of dice loaded to give a high number. What? Insane. I've heard of a similar situation that if you give a judge a snickers bar before the ruling it will typically will be a lighter sentencing. Judges, yikes.

Takeaway #2 - Our brains work in two systems

System 1 essentially is like our brain operating in co-pilot mode. We don't really have to pay full attention to where the home button is on our phone but kicks into System 2 which is more manual work like parallel parking and needing to concentrate on long form math.

Our System 1 brain is more emotional and System 2 is more logical but we use our System 1 way more than System 2 and really don't like using our System 2 as it takes way more effort.

In the past advertising thought customers were persuaded by rational things like cost value when really customers are swung more by emotional messaging, how it makes them feel. So you see detergent ads go from practical to sympathetic. (side note, how much does it hurt reading that 50's ad?)

Rating: 2/5

Recommendation:

Instead of reading the book I recommend you to read the NYT review. Even my gal pal, who reads probably 5 books a month liked it, but agreed it was too long.